New Air Force Budget Cuts Down the F-35 Fleet

The Department of Defense's 2017 budget is out, and the Air Force's version of the F-35 is taking flak. Under the Air Force's new multi-year spending forecast, the service will lose nearly four dozen of the controversial fighters to self-inflicted budget cuts.

Under the 2017 budget, the U.S. Air Force will cut five F-35As from its budget request. This will reduce the purchase from a planned 48 fighters to 43. Each plane will cost $118 million each. Overall, according to Ars Technica, the Air Force is cutting 45 F-35s from its budget over the next five years, deferring them to some point in the future when they will be more affordable. Maybe.

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Overall, the Air Force plans to buy nearly 100 aircraft in 2017. The budget will pay for 43 F-35 fighters, 15 KC-46A aerial refueling tankers, 24 MQ-9 reapers, and a dozen C-130J medium transports. At the same time, the Air Force is set to spend half a billion dollars a year on upgrades for existing F-15C and F-16C fighters—a figure set to rise to more than a billion by 2021. The A-10 Warthog fleet is set to receive only $12 million in upgrades, but hey, at least it's still around.

One project that hasn't been cut: Northrop Grumman's Long Range Strike Bomber. The Air Force wants to spend $1.3 billion to develop the replacement for the B-52 and B-1 bombers in 2017, rising to $3 billion annually by 2021. The Air Force is expected to buy 80-100 LRSBs at a unit cost of $511 million each. First flight is scheduled for the early to mid-2020s.

One surprisingly expensive program is the Air Force One replacement. The Air Force has allocated $2.8 billion between 2016 and 2021 for two aircraft, modified 747-8 wide body passenger planes expected to be in service by 2024.

Meanwhile in the world of drones, Global Hawk and the MQ-9 Reaper are in and the Predator is out. The Air Force is retiring its fleet of the smaller, less capable Predators to concentrate on the larger, more heavily armed Reaper.

It's not all planes though—the Air Force's responsibilities include much of military space and the nuclear deterrent force. It's set to spend $1.8 billion on space rockets and nearly $3 billion on satellites, including GPS, communications satellites, and space-based sensors. The service also spends $667 million on its force of Minuteman III ICBMs, or about $1.48 million per missile. It's spending $113 million this year on developing a replacement for the Minuteman in a program called Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, a figure set to increase more than tenfold by 2021.

Finally, some bad news for U-2 fans. Although the ageless spy plane gets a modest $74 million spike in funding in 2017, the plane is on the edge of retirement. Funding is set to decrease sharply year over year until 2020, when the program will be completely unfunded. The U-2's mission is being taken over by the Global Hawk spy drone.

For the Air Force, now is the calm before the budgetary storm—or, to use a more colorful metaphor—the calm before the train wreck. Over the coming years, the service will somehow have to figure out how to pay for the F-35 fighter, T-X jet trainer, KC-46A Pegasus tanker, Long Range Strike Bomber, Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, and even a new pair of Air Force Ones. How will USAF pay for everything? That's a very, very good question.